Azalea

Since moving into the new abode we've had two parties, home grown apple juice, plenty of wine (woohoo),  4 boquets (2 delivered!) and a pair of potted Azalea plants.

I hadn't done much but water them and let them wilt until today (the first day of snow in our yard!).
I repotted them in one big pot together, the bottom filled with squished plastic water bottles. We'll see how it goes.

After a bit of internet research I'm kind of in love with Azaleas! Check it out...

 

 

 

 

 

 I like them because you can prune them into a tree, and they have some major flower impact!

 

 

 

 These are mine where they sit in the kitchen. Far from pretty at the moment, first priority is just to get them through the winter.

 

 

Allegedly, there are over 10,000 species or hybrids of this plant. They are considered a high maintenance indoor plant (oh great) and are supposed to be a spring bloomer. They can be planted in early spring or late fall and pine needles are their preferred fertilizer (Got lots of those!). They don't like their roots too wet (oops) and are partial to partial shade. 

You can find a cool Azalea for dummies here, which is where all of the trivia above came from.

 

 I am tempted to plant mine outside, as it is currently late fall but because they are flowering-ish they think it's spring. I'm thinking it would mean certain death if I kicked them outside in this condition. I'll have to figure out how to hurry this process along and get them through summer fall and winter so they are ready for spring in T - 4 or 5 months! The garage is my new best friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short lived shower

So I was trying to enjoy a longer than 5 minute shower (we haven't had the luxury of that much hot water in 2 years!) and was rudely interrupted by a husband yelling "whatever you're doing stop doing it right now". Allegedly water was pouring into the basement bathtub, I've included photographic evidence for you below. 

There is a hole under that peeled up linoleum

And this is where Quincy ripped the flooring out to make the hole larger and more obvious.

And this is the hole. Little more caulking on that corner of the shower maybe?

My thoughts on the matter were "What's a first home in our marriage without a hole in the floor?" Q smiled but I'm not sure if it was real or he was just showing me his teeth. 

Brilliant. I need one.

http://www.swiss-miss.com/2013/10/paper-app-moleskine.html

We bought a house!!

And we have (mostly) moved in!!!

Stephen Hawking's big ideas... made simple - animation

This is awesome

Meet my newest find. He came into my life in the stunning little town of Okanagan falls at a flea market for $25.00. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me!

I went to Home Depot the other day and bought him some high gloss white paint. I considered navy blue (which I still think would be stunning) but in the end the white will be a bit more friendly to a variety of spaces. When I saw this photo I was sold! 

http://pinterest.com/pin/129337820521775496/

The hardware on my baby is brass, and with a bit of polishing should be looking pretty good! 

Monty memoir

I had the day off yesterday and had big plans to ride Mr. Monty for a good long time. I woke up to a torrential downpour. It rained pretty hard early on, and a bit more before lunch. I didn't get to the barn until almost 6! Bit when I did it was beautiful. Monty was clean and his fur was so soft. I tired him out within about a half an hour, we've been doing more trail riding than arena training this summer. He has also been enjoying a lot of free time this summer and has a round belly to prove it. 

I want to take some lessons with him this fall just to push myself to focus, and develop more skills. This will come in handy if Quincy and I return to Honduras this winter and I do some riding there!

Some awesome blog linking

Thanks to :
A Cup of Jo and swissmiss  I have found a few new things to obsess about. Allow me to demonstrate.

1. I have always been a brand loyalist. My non-negotiables are Jello brand jello, Aunt Jemimas table syrup, China Lily soy sauce and Heinz ketchup. I will generally forgo the 'alternatives' and go condiment free if my fave is unavailable (soy sauce and syrup are sometimes forgivable in fine dining establishments).

Enjoy. I know I did, word for word.  I love you Heinz

2. I love to read about people taking the road less traveled in life and things working out swimmingly for them. I think I'll be a regular over here from now on.

3. Book nerd alert

Surprising (and great reading list potential!)

I NEED one
 
just one more reason to get knocked up
 
From Winnie the Poo. Cue the Awwwweee

DIY Thursday

So we have been working on a total tin can trailer overhaul. We bought a 1983 Avion (similar to airstream) last year and lived in it for 8 months while travelling the province. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

A few of the worst a were hitting our heads on the overhead cabinets, cracked plumbing again and again, and the stinky old person smell. 

So early this spring Quincy decided to tackle the plumbing. Every time we had moved somewhere new it cracked because its just so old. That turned into a complete gutting and rebuild. I'd say we're about 78% of the way there. I'll share some of the process with you after Ive collected photos from various digital devices. For now, let's have a painting tutorial! This is a segment that I should probably call D. I. DONT.

We had settled on 2 main colours for the painting portion of the project, and one of them is a creamish yellow. Without my authorization Quincy painted the entire bathroom in that colour. I didn't give a shit. Not until we realized we would have to reuse our nasty old tub. It is specifically designed for the round cornered structure and contains plumbing that would otherwise have to be exposed. I believe people refer to its gross hue as 'almond.' This is funny though because it is so close to the creamish yellow. Not a good combination. At. All.

Enter $50 of grey-blue paint. Of course I purchased it 2 days before Quincy came home after working out of town for the week. Of course I didn't crack the lid until 8:30pm an hour before his E.T.A, wanting to surprise him. This is one part procrastination, one part it's a long story. Of course he didn't even look until moments before his departure back to the out of town job site when I forced the issue.  

Rule number 1 of painting in the dark: Use a colour that is a high in contrast to the existing one. This way you can still see the difference in shade long after you can no longer see colour as night sets in.

Rule number 2: Paint

Rule number 3: Bring a flashlight or some such thing so that you can see the numerous gaps and errors and attempt to fix them before the paint dries.

It is important to note that as you can not actually see the colour while you are painting it is impossible to verify that the colour is correct. My bathroom is baby blue at this point, not blue grey as I had specifically planned. Whoops.

This is Awesome

So basically I love to collect stuff. Junk, really but it's all in the eye of the beholder, no? Here, you get to see what I've foolishly spent my money on and wither I in fact love it or hate it.

Welcome to the find of the day. A weaving loom.

A few weeks ago I forced my hub to take me to this 'estate sale crap' store. Really great stuff, reasonable prices. The owner had an amazing little teak kitchen cabinet set, some GORGEOUS oak filing cabinets, a real stunner of a lamp shade that I bought for my horse lamp - hey, new post right there! and then he had someone's grandma's craft supplies. An antique Singer sewing machine operated by foot peddle, a spinning wheel and a weaving loom. All in mint condition - someone was buying but sure wasn't using this stuff for the last 50 years. I got all excited and like a big shot got a price on the package deal. All three pieces of junk could be mine for only $350.00. So I went home to Google, and mull and obsess and after a few Etsy searches, YouTube tutorials and castanet scours I decided that I must have a loom.

The ones currently available were either enormous things that need an entire room devoted to them, or some mini tabletop ones. You can only imagine the feelings of.. ahem.. inadequacy I would have if I came home after spending a chunk of change on something so small when it could potentially be sooo big! They ranged in price from $150.00 - $600.00.

I was driving by the junk store again today and at the last second wheeled into the parking lot. Waltzed into the place, checked on my kitchen (gone), checked on my filing cabinets (there woohoo!) and checked on my loom. It had in fact been tucked into a dark corner, that thing wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. I casually asked the guy if the thing was intact and he pulled out all of the pieces. A unicorn appeared and the loom turned out to be the perfect size, it stands on the floor, has a mid sized width and all of the parts are present (well, except for one but still).

So it had a $300.00 price tag on it. I ask the store owner what his real price was, he tells me $200.00. I tell him $180.00. He tells me his kids will starve. I know he has no kids at home, he is a retired divorcee married to a retired divorcee. HAH. Loom is mine for $180.00, and he threw in an enormous roll of white wool yarn for free. Which, as it turns out does not function in a loom.

 In general, I think I love this loom - hate the wool. I must buy something more appropriate. After that well, watch out world, you're all getting scarves for Christmas!

 It came complete with instructions, a bill of sale (ordered on boxing day 1945 at a whopping $22.50) and a letter written to the original purchaser signed by the president of the company! Quite neat.

We've been spending all weekend painting and building and improving our Avion travel trailer. I took a quick break (aka I'm hiding inside) and came across this link. WOW humans have made an enormous investment in the internet in the last... 5 seconds.

Check it out!
                                                 
                                                    http://onesecond.designly.com/

This is our older dog Axle. Such a sweet photo of him, such a huge wart!!!! It is gone now thank goodness, I hadn't been able to make eye contact with him for the last month of the wart's life on his face.

And here is Buster the day we got him last spring. AWWWWWWEEE

Introductions

This is me, Heather Burr. University graduate, hot dog sales person, wife of two years, over the top empathetic, parent of furr children (horse, 2 dogs). Vagabond.

This is my husband Quincy. Engineer, hard worker, parent of same furry children, loves machines that move dirt in large quantities.

This is us together. We are in the process of buying a property (yay), just returned from 2 years of traveling and homelessness (unless you count a 35' vintage rv as a home... I do :) ) It has been exciting, frustrating, surprising, a million other descriptive nouns and a couple of special four-letter ones as well.





We have been having the 'most exciting year of our lives' 'so many big changes happening this year' 'wow, things can change so fast' kind of a year for about 3 years in a row now. I keep trying to keep up with recording it all in a blog for those years that we are longing for adventure (I can't even imagine what that is like anymore) but there is so much going on I can't seem to keep up.

Maybe I will do a few 'back stories' on our recent adventures in the coming weeks. Thrown in there will (hopefully) be posts on property search, animal love, summertme in the okanagan and some sweet vintage finds!

Hello Again

Hello you, long time no see.

I'm back, and with a new blog name. I'm pretty sure this makes 4. At first I called it hoarding, then decided that I prefer the term "collecting."

While were on the subject, lets talk about my other collections...
polaroid cameras
pyrex dishes
feathers
rocks
sea shells
old glass bottles
fish bottles (whole n'other category)
there are also 4-5 glass drink despensers
trunks
linnens and blankets (seriously)
vintage aprons
fabric
does 'assorted vintage finds' count?

anywhoo now that I see a list in writing, it scares me. Let's move on.

For the sake of my comfort zone, let's establish that "you" is the writing space/ internet's personality.

Lets also discuss the purporse here, a place to record the comings and goings of my husband and myself during this crazy transitional time in our lives.